The First Time | danny flanigan, musician

Danny Flanigan

Louisville's danny flanigan is known these days for thoughtful songwriting about the human condition, but back in the 1980s he used to wear his hair in a mohawk and rock the college circuit as a member of Hopscotch Army.

Here he shares what the band's first week in public was like.

"It's January 1988. Hopscotch Army is debuting. We strategically booked a week of gigs on the road to work the kinks out and save on hometown embarrassment. We're scared to death. Myself and keyboardist Mark Ritcher have never really sang lead in front of people.

"We're pretty sure our voices are awful. And now we're both responsible for singing 22, 23 songs a night, each. We can't imagine that our voices are going to hold up. What if we can't sing on the last night of the week? ... This is all we do for a living. Four guys in the band ... and two on the crew and if I can't sing then we can't play and no one will make any money. That's a pressure I wouldn't take on today. Thank God I was 23.

"My diction was, and still is, impressively bad, so I got all of the R.E.M. songs. Mark sang the Cure songs. If it was a low voice we were covering, I sang it. If it was higher, dreamy or screamy, it was all Mark.

"We were far from great, but we weren't terrible. People didn't boo or throw things. Looking back, I realize 'It was the songs, stupid.' We were covering some pretty great material: early R.E.M., The Cure, The Cult, Depeche Mode, Jane's Addiction, The Replacements. We could barely sing, but people could hear past that and easily recognized that we loved the songs we were covering. Musically we were pretty solid.

"Had we been a Top 40 band, we would have been fired. ... But alternative music allowed for a-little-off-key-but-it's-cool-if-you-mean-it singing. And then there's beer. Beer helped. A lot."

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The First Time | danny flanigan, musician

Louisville's danny flanigan is known these days for thoughtful songwriting about the human condition, but back in the 1980s he used to wear his hair in a mohawk and rock the college circuit as a